Roll 2: Development Mistakes

Making mistakes in Photography is something that no photography can ever totally avoid but not all photographers can make there mistakes look like they were done on purpose. The most famous example of this that comes to mind is what happened when Man Ray's assistant Lee Miller accidentally opened the dark room door while Man Ray was printing leading to an interesting effect called Solarisation.

I am still waiting for that inspiration mistake to happen to my photography. My mistake while developing my second roll of film in comparison lead ruining most of the roll.

I had arrived early for the next class for some extra dark room time so I picked up a tank and some spools, it was only after three failed attempts to get the film on the spool did I decided to put the film into the tank and take a breather and figure out where I was going wrong. Here was the mistake was made. I had only placed on the top lid and forgot add the stem in first, so the artificial light was just pouring all over the film.

It turns out that the first spool I was using was defective. The spools have two ball bearings to help feed the film through the only I lost all confidence on only had one so the film could not be fead on correctly. After getting a new spool I was eventually able to get the film on the spool and ready to be developed. Lucky I had turned up early as I was able to finish up just in time for class. Some what disappointed that the film just have black rectangles where the images should have been.

This time I shall forgo the proof sheet as I only got a few usable frames. But for the technically minded it I was developing Kodak Tri-X EI400 in XTOL1:1 for 8.5min at 20C. As there were so few useable images I have not bothered to make a proof sheet.

Water Lilly, Royal Botanical Gardens Sydney.

This shot was taken down by the main pond at the Royal Botanical Gardens with a Vivitar 85-205mm f3.8 zoom lens that also has a close focussing feature. What drew me to this image was the soft tones of the lilly petals compared to the slightly spiky stem. The shot was taken at 1/60 f8, which I felt comfortable hand holding at the time.

Also notice that the bottom of frame has been fogged out from the light leak.

Gerbera Petals

When I was at the florist trying to find some flower to make a photograph of I, then one thing that I kept in mine was that I wanted something that had tonal variation on the petals. Shooting black and white one must always keep in mind how the light, tones and, textures will render as tones of grey.

These Gerberas had some lovely pink tips that I expect would look great in black and white in soft light. In the end what makes this shot for me is the fogging that happened on the bottom half of the frame, which opened up this square crop.

I quite like this shot, sure it is not perfect. But just maybe the mistake came up with something interesting.